Supreme Court to Rule on Whether Band Name “The Slants” Is Offensive

First Amendment case also holds implications for the Washington Redskins

Photo by Anthony Pidgeon/Redferns

Several years ago, Simon Tam of Portland, Oregon band the Slants started trying to register his all-Asian dance-rock group’s name as a trademark. However, a federal law blocks the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from registering trademarks that may “disparage” someone or their “institutions, beliefs, or national symbols.” The patent office repeatedly rejected the band’s applications, ruling that “slants” was a disparaging term about Asians. The band, which has said it’s trying to reclaim the word, appealed to federal circuit court, and last December, the court found in Tam’s favor, striking down the part of the 1946 Lanham Act that bars disparaging trademarks. In April, the patent office asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. Today, the court announced it had agreed to hear the case.

In a petition to the Supreme Court, the government argued that the trademark law didn’t limit free speech, as the Slants could keep using their name. Unusually, Tam agreed that the case should go before the Supreme Court, arguing that the law was overly vague and the name was not disparaging.

Tam’s lawyer, John Connell, in his brief to the Supreme Court, drew a comparison to the name N.W.A. “Simon Tam is not a bigot; he is fighting bigotry with the time-honored technique of seizing the bigots’ own language,” Connell wrote. “Only an uninformed philistine could find the band’s name disparaging.”

The court’s decision in the case could also affect the Washington Redskins, the football team whose trademark claim is pending in a federal circuit after being canceled in 2014. Tam has criticized the Redskins name as a racist slur. His case will be heard later in a court term that starts next week.